Operation
The Domino A.L.C.’s LCD screen is 2″ x 1.125″. It has a nice blue glow, and is pretty bright. The cooler has three modes of operation, Quiet, Performance, and Full. In both Quiet and Performance modes, the fan is silent, I couldn’t hear it over my fairly quiet GPU fan. In Full mode, I was reminded of my old Socket A rig that had seven 80mm case fans. Honestly, I have never heard a 120mm fan so loud.
Operating modes are changed by pressing a button on the side of the panel. There is also an audible beep when changing modes, one beep for Quiet, two for Performance, and three for Full.
The screen will also show warning codes in case of fan failure, temperature sensor failure, or pump failure.
Testing
For testing I compared the Domino A.L.C.’s temps to my Kingwin 12025 Direct Touch Heatpipe CPU cooler. It has a 120mm fan, and though a fairly inexpensive cooler, it actually does a pretty good job at keeping the CPU at decent temperatures. For Idle temps, I left the rig totally at idle for 30 minutes. For load temps I ran two instances of Prime95, one per core, for 30 minutes. For overclock temps, I overclocked the E-8400 from the stock 3.0gHz to 3.62gHz. Ambient room temperature was around 75F for all testing.
Stock Clock:
Idle Temp Air: 33C
Idle Temp Domino A.L.C.: 29C
Load Temp Air: 42C
Load Temp Domino A.L.C.: 39C
Overclock:
Idle Temp Air: 37C
Idle Temp Domino A.L.C.: 33C
Load Temp Air: 48C
Load Temp Domino A.L.C.: 42C
I tried each in all the performance modes, and there was little or no difference in temperatures, which means that the Domino will cool your rig just fine in silence.